The armed forces’ vote in Canadian general elections, 1940–1968

vision set that can get the Madison Avenue commercials . I guess it was because, lacking a television set, you used your imagination. You came out of that house, your cheeks tingling; not because of the cold; because of the joy you had put into the use of it. Like shovelling a pathway through the snow to your own doorstep. We had come in from the snow. I called it blue, if you will search your mind. It was blue at that hour, the hour of evening when it is below zero and the sun has just gone. The world is so keen that cold and heat, in the acuteness of degree of sensitivity, become mixed; a doorknob will burn you. I hadn't wanted to come in; I was so tired I could hardly climb the hill of snow; but kids are invincible. My mother made me. When I was out of earshot in the dining-room with my sister - my caked leggings and sweater and scarf and mittens off and hung by my mother on the wooden rack attached to the wall behind the kitchen stove - I turned in fury to my sister and said of my mother, "Damn her!" It was venomous, and I cringe now to mention it. It was crude and selfish and pusillaniThe armed forces' vote in Canadian general elections, 1940-1968 J. L. GRANATSTE·IN The strength of the Canadian Armed Fo:rces in recent years has never been more than one percent of the Canadian population. The military do their jobs in relative obscurity, ignored by their fellow citizens and rarely visible as anything more than toy soldiers posturing for the tourists on Parliament Hill each summer. And yet, the armed forces have achieved a certain notoriety in the eyes of psephologists and editorial writers for the unwilling part they are made to play in Canadian general elections. The wondrous workings of the electornl system make Canada's soldiers, sailors, and airmen 6 mous and ungrateful and spontaneous and mean and without excuse whatever in the widest degree . I say so now, and saying so now doesn't mitigate one iota the feeling of shame in me, despite what the psychologists say, that confession is good for the soul. Well, there it is, this transgression against my mother, with all the beauty of the love and the snow. That is life, I suppose. It is strange how far contrition will go. That incident, long lost in time, as the snow is, enables me to know the love of the person I love, when I remember; that is why I hate violence and the democracy that prefers us to remain ourselves; and that is why I am tender: have a tenderness toward life that some people define as an excuse to avoid their hard facts and a weakness that I ought to toughen, and others interpret as oversensitive and impractical and even naive though I can tell, if given half a conversation between them, even of the most hard-bitten kind, the dullest amount of flattery the cynics need to disguise for them their self-regard, and make them, for the moment, love each other, in company they are anxious to cultivate. the solitary occupational group whose vote is revealed constituency by constituency. Worse still, the military voting results are released five days to one week after the details of the civilian vote have been announced, a situation that maximizes the publicity given the armed forces' ballots. In addition, circumstances have been such that in the general elections of 1945, 1957, 1962, and 1965, the £.ate of the government mat least the question of a majority - has hung on the delayed military results. In 1957and1963, for example, Prime Ministers Louis S. St. Laurent and John G. Diefenbaker respectively did not concede defeat until the Canadian Armed Forces' vote was released five days after the election. Nine times since 1945, seemingly successful candidates on election day have been overturned by the "soldier vote," a Hst that includes Prime Minister W. L. Mackenzie King in 1945.1 Revue d'etudes canadiennes With Canada in a period in which minority governments may still occur frequently an examination...